


The Willow's Dark Heart

by amyfortuna



Series: Silmread Ficlets [7]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Entish Romance, Ficlet, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Other, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2017-03-02
Packaged: 2018-09-27 19:23:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10041398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyfortuna/pseuds/amyfortuna
Summary: A tragic Entish romance.





	

Long ago, before the Elves crossed the Misty Mountains on their way to the West, before Orcs roamed the world, before time itself began to be counted, there were the Ents, shepherds of the trees. 

Legend tells that the Elves woke them, taught them how to speak and sing, but they needed no awakening to communicate with each other. They walked their forests, each to his own plot of ground, save for Treebeard, chief among them, who travelled far and wide, from the pine heights of Dorthonion to the southern lands of what would later be Gondor. 

In his journeying, he met a Willow Ent, bright and vast, with weeping trails of leaves that swept the ground, so green, so fair that he forgot his brown and lovely Entwife in her garden lands to the south. Becoming enamoured of the Willow, he stayed long in Eriador by the shores of the Withywindle, and for many years their roots were entwined and their branches tossed together by the same wind. 

But the Willow, fair though he was, grew a dark heart. Some say that a spider's venom, one of Ungoliant's foul brood or indeed Ungoliant herself as she fled, pierced him so that he turned away from caring for life into hating it, from nurturing his forest to controlling it. And one day, in the early days of the Sun, when she rode yet Eastward across the sky, Treebeard stirred himself from heavy slumber to find that the Willow's heart was fierce against him and that death lay in wait for him upon his waking. 

So might the greatest of all the Ents have perished, had the River-daughter in her beauty and might not come forth from the brown mud of the Withywindle, had not the ancient Tom Bombadil stepped forth out of the earth itself, where for long years he had lain in waiting, and aided Treebeard with their songs. With their help, he escaped and returned to Fangorn in grief, there to find several of his children, young Entings once, grown to stewardship themselves. 

He nevermore returned to walk in the woods of Eriador, and the Willow there grew in power, controlling and keeping all trees in the forest under his will. Only Bombadil and Goldberry he could not master, and in hate for them plotted to destroy all things that walked on two legs and wandered in his forest. And ever he was thwarted by the River and by the Earth, until one day, in a great storm, lightning struck him, and his dark heart burned.


End file.
